Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
The public appetite for American Indian crafts and artistic motifs can be traced back to the early part of this century, the same period of American cultural nativism that inspired the Arts and Crafts movement in midwestern industrial cities and a flight of young painters and sculptors to fledgling artists' colonies in the American Southwest. Before the Depression put an end to this bonanza for nativeborn talent, American Indians had been able to stake a large claim in media as diverse as miniature totem poles, beadwork, and basketry. While museums scoured the countryside for medicine bundles, pipes, and headdresses, the American middle-class accumulated more recent and secular works, not only tourist wares but family treasures shaken loose by the forces of poverty. With the renewal of popular interest in all things American Indian in the early 1970s, a great quantity of this middle-class accumulation is coming back to light in exhibitions, catalogues, and illustrated critical works like The Flag in American Indian Art. Unfortunately, the authors promise more than they are able to deliver.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:3 (Summer 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.